Due to Italian laws, fertility treatments are only available to heterosexual couples.

When she and her partner, Micaela Ghisleni, tried to register their son Niccolo Pietro after his birth on Friday last week, she was told to say she had had sex with a man.

In a Facebook post, Ms Foglietta said she was told by authorities: ‘You must declare you had union (sexual relations) with a man to register your son.

‘There is no form to say you had artificial insemination.’

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She said the legal black hole is due to a 2002 ministerial decree that does not foresee that a woman, rather than a heterosexual couple, would seek artificial insemination.

Ms Foglietta used artificial insemination in Denmark to get pregnant, with sperm donated by an anonymous man.

Chiara Foglietta, a councillor in Turin, has urged others to push for change (Picture: Chiara Foglietta/Facebook)

She was told she could lie about the child’s origins but she refused, writing on Facebook: ‘Every child has a right to know his own story.’

She argued that her son came into this world because she and Micaela had wanted a child, and that ‘he is our son’.

Further in her post, Ms Foglietta urged people to do more to tackle the issue.

‘You have an important role and you can do so much more. We can do more together,’ she said.

‘Not for me, but for Niccolo, for all rainbow children, for families who do not have the same strength to face these battles, for the children of single women and those with partners who have chosen medically assisted procreation with external donor and want to tell the truth.’

Italy does not allow fertility treatments – including surrogacy, sperm or egg donation and embryo freezing – for anyone apart from ‘stable straight couples’ proven to be clinically infertile.

The country’s rate of progress when it comes to same-sex parents has been slow.

In 2014, a lesbian couple became the first in the country to legally adopt a child and it wasn’t until last year that the first gay couple was recognised as the legal parents of children born to a surrogate.

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Turin mayor Chiara Appendino confirmed that ‘the law currently does not provide for recognition of the sons and daughters of homosexual couples born in Italy,’ according to the BBC.

She added: ‘Personally I am in favour and willing to proceed with registration, but with this current legal vacuum the rights of the parents and children cannot be guaranteed.’